4-4-4-4 beep code caused by bad RAM?

[brucehe]

I apologize if this has been discussed but my Google Search of the forum did not come up with this story.

My Dad's t42 had come up with a red screen at boot up "hardware has been changed" so he put it in the mail for me to look at. It arrived with two sheared off hinges. After starting it and going to the BIOS screen it continued booting to a clean XP start (hard to say what he had done previously). OK, the machine ran fine, I did a factory restore and put on a dual boot of W7. I also ran all PC doctor tests 10 times and they all passed. It ran for a week and then would not start giving me a 4-4-4-4 beep code, according to the HMM related to the security chip (I read those posts). I then pulled the RAM inside of the machine, and put that stick on the outside after cleaning the connectors on the sticks. It booted to W7. I changed it back to the original "bad?" stick and it hung up or gave me the 4-4-4-4 beep code. I was able to put the other "good" stick back in and it booted. I was able to replicate this at least 6 times. I then put the "bad " stick in the inside and it hung or gave me the 4-4-4-4 beep code, replaced with the "good" stick and it booted.

Do you all think I found the problem, a bad stick of RAM or is there more damage to the system board from the shipping hits?

Bruce

[RealBlackStuff]

Seems obvious that you have some bad RAM.
Buy a 1GB PC2700 SODIMM.
You can always sell that again later on.

[brucehe]

Here is an update. Changed out the 1GB RAM stick and it runs fine. Running W7 with 32% RAM utilization with 1.5GB total in the machine.

Looks like the 4444 Beep Code can be caused by memory problems.

Bruce